I don't understand why it's even made it to Panorama. It's really not that big a deal to anyone outside of football and even most people in it. Clearly Usmanov and his business colleagues have upset someone within the establishment who want to make a show of him. That's usually how the BBC work.

Read the Guardian article - it seems like a more factual take on the paper trail, with less of the sensationalising "what if"s and "may have"s of Panorama.

So it says there’s no link between the two?

I’m on my phone so difficult to read to be honest. But the evidence is pretty damming as the former FA chairman said and if like I said they want to punish somebody it’s not likely to be Arsenal where he’s got no power at all.

Hopefully they can brush it away somehow. We’ll have to wait and see.

Logged

There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch.

I’m on my phone so difficult to read to be honest. But the evidence is pretty damming as the former FA chairman said and if like I said they want to punish somebody it’s not likely to be Arsenal where he’s got no power at all.

Hopefully they can brush it away somehow. We’ll have to wait and see.

Why would they punish anyone? No-one has done anything illegal. Lots of circumstantial evidence which a very expensive legal team will tear to shreds in any courtroom. Which it will never get to.

I’m on my phone so difficult to read to be honest. But the evidence is pretty damming as the former FA chairman said and if like I said they want to punish somebody it’s not likely to be Arsenal where he’s got no power at all.

Hopefully they can brush it away somehow. We’ll have to wait and see.

Reading it my understanding is that no rules have been broken but that rules in future could be changed so that business partners cannot have stakes in two different premiership entries

Logged

[lightbox=image_url|title|group|float][/lightbox]

Likes...

A spokesman for Moshiri confirmed to the Guardian that Usmanov’s Epion, a British Virgin Islands company, paid for the whole Arsenal stake. However, the spokesman said this did not show the whole picture of the relations between them, and Moshiri had paid Usmanov for his half-share of the initial Arsenal stake using money Moshiri had in his own separate investment company.

“This cash payment [for the Arsenal shares] was funded by a 2007 dividend that Mr Moshiri received from an investment company which was 100% beneficially owned by Mr Moshiri. All of this is meticulously laid out in contractual agreements between the two parties,” the spokesman said.

“It is clear that Mr Moshiri’s participation in Red and White originated from his own funds and that Mr Moshiri is a person of very significant independent wealth, and this was already true in 2007.”

The Guardian has been shown a document in which Epion did acknowledge receiving payment from a company owned by Moshiri for his half of the Arsenal stake, in full.